Cal Thomas: Maddow ‘is the best argument’ for using contraceptives

The culture wars have been as heated as ever over the past few weeks, and participants at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. on Thursday did not shy away from any of it.

At CPAC’s afternoon “All-Star Panel” on “What to Expect in 2012″ panelist and syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas offered his thoughts about MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and the rest of her MSNBC brethren following a clip of Maddow on Meet the Press accusing the Republican Party of “waging a war on contraceptives.”

“Cal, let’s talk about this religious — this is serious, we laugh about it, but this is serious in terms of — if they get away with this — what would happen in a second term? We see a lot of outrage, but if that outrage doesn’t turn to action in November, what are we looking at here?” moderator Genevieve Wood of The Heritage Foundation asked Thomas.

Thomas answered that Maddow herself is actually the best argument in favor of contraceptives.

“Well I’m really glad, Genevieve, that you played the Rachel Maddow clip,” Thomas said, “because I think that she is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception. I would be all for that, and all of the rest of the crowd at MSNBC, too, for that matter.”

Thomas went on to explain why he believed the decision to mandate contraceptive coverage was troublesome.

“All great inhumanities and outrages start at the fringes,” he said. “So you have the 95-year-old, double brain tumor, sclerotic grandma who has signed a living will and wants the government to kill her — although we won’t call it like that — and that is how euthanasia gets accepted. You have something like this, that is forced into the insurance policies of not only Catholics but any religious institution or even a secular one that may not believe in doing this, it does not matter and it is a wedge issue for them. Once they establish the beachhead as a right to do this, then they will use that as precedent for increasing righteousness.”

According to Thomas, the government has become increasingly power-hungry.

“The government considers itself God now, in case you didn’t know that,” he added. “I think that since it does consider itself God, that it immediately disenfranchises itself from us on the basis of separation of church and state.”